For years of holding out and hoping the sport and movies would some how miraculously return to terrestrial TV, I finally had Sky installed at the weekend. I must admit I have been very impressed so far. I tried to have Sky installed the week before through BOX CLEVER, but hey could not get the right day and where very rude when I contacted them to chase them up (opinion on DooYou under electrical offline shops). So I contacted Sky directly and asked for them to install the dish and they booked it for Friday the 13th, very ominous indeed. However, I was able to request morning or afternoon and on the day of the installation I received a call to say he would be round later on in the morning. He did turn up, installed the dish, explained the use of the digibox and was very friendly and quick.

All very good and what you would hope for, but strange how many companies can not deliver this good type of customer services.

So I was off and running flicking through my 600+ channels, and very difficult task it would seem if this was a normal terrestrial service and my thumb recoiled just at the thought of it. This however is the digital age and life is a lot easier. You are presented with a TV guide button on your remote which list the various type of programs available and you can select from, ALL, ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, SPORT, KIDS, NEWS, SPECIALIST, A-Z. Pick your choice and see the channels available under that topic and on at the present time. Then you can scroll through the next weeks programming and select the info button to read reviews on the forthcoming programs. Finally once you have selected your program and are watching you can then scan through a small preview panel on your screen of other programs available. This is just one way of selecting a program there are many more ways of choosing which allow you to break it all down it small and smaller sub categories, so many in fact it would take to long to list them all.

So I watched a cou
ple of movies and some old TV programs like the A-TEAM. Then I got to play with the interactive side of Sky when I voted Josh off BIG BROTHER and switched between cameras in the house. Then the next day I watched a rugby match on Sky Sports interactive. I switched onto the matched and selected REF LINK and was able to hear all the decision made by the REF, and a bit shouting and swearing of the players. The REF LINK is brilliant as it allows to understand the REF's reasons for his decisions. Plus there was also, Statistics and Australian commentary (Loins Vs Australian) to select from.

Later I switched into OPEN Skys email and shopping services which all seem to work very nicely for what it is, but I think I will stick to my PC for surfing the web and shopping. However if you don't have a PC then it will do the job, but will you probably need the key board if you want to use it a lot. It did have a go cinema listings section which will be a lot quicker than turning on the computer etc.

Of course I should also mention that most programs seem to screen on Sky or Satellite channels first such as Friends, Buffy, Angel, X-files, Star Trek etc etc.
Plus the of course you have your teletext services which are the same as before, but you can also get Satellite text services on certain channels which seem to offer the same services but in a different format.

There is also a program planner available which will reminder you or auto matically switch over to your program when it starts. This wasn't working on mine so I called up the Sky helpline and was informed by a very nice Scottish women that all digiboxes are currently being software updated via the phoneline (Skydigibox should always be connected to a phone socket), and thus should appearing in a week or 2, if not I should call back and they will do it there and then.

So overall very good, I still have to try the pay per view channels such as Sky Box office and get
to use the program planner. At the end up the day Sky have definitely pushed forward the boundaries up Television and will continue to do so. All that other companies like BBC, ITV regions, NTL, OnDigital can do is follow in its wake.